Alarm Clock Most useful high explosives, like ammonium nitrate, are enormously violent ... once they’re triggered. But they will remain seemingly inert when beaten, burned, variously punished—until the particular shock required comes along ... ANY years had passed since the original country rock had been broken, cut and set, to form solid pavement for the courtyard at Opertal Prison. And over those years the stones had suffered change as countless feet, scuffing and pressing against once rough edges, had smoothed the bits of rock, burnishing their surfaces until the light of the setting sun now reflected from them as from polished mosaic.
As Stan Graham crossed the wide expanse from library to cell block, his shoe soles added their small bit to the perfection of the age-old polish.
He looked up at the building ahead of him, noting the coarse, weathered stone of the walls. The severe, vertical lines of the mass reminded him of Kendall Hall, back at the Stellar Guard Academy. He smiled wryly.
There were, he told himself, differences. People rarely left this place against their wishes. None had wanted to come here. Few had any desire to stay. Whereas at the Academy—
. . .
